Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over

Nick Soulsby

JAWBONE

Jaw-dropping oral history of ferocious polymath.

Driven by rage at her abusing-from-childhood bible-salesman father, the 17-year-old Lydia Lunch loudly eclipsed Patti Smith and Debbie Harry for fearless confrontation and breaking sexual taboos when she landed in downtown New York as punk was breaking in 1976. The first modern riot grrl, Lunch cut a precocious swathe, using sex as her weapon in the teeming artistic hotbed thriving in the decimated East Village. As she says in this overdue biography: “black haired, traumatising, sadistic, baby face killer. I scared people”.

Appearing in low-budget films, Lunch led NY’s antagonistic no-wave offshoot, fronting Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, Beirut Slump and Eight Eyed Spy. After recording 1980’s vivacious solo Queen Of Siam, she commenced pursuing her artistic impulses around the globe (including following the

Birthday Party to Berlin), igniting the relentless hit-and-run creative inferno that still burns brightly today.

This magnificent biography places Lunch’s narrative amid vivid accounts from bandmates, lovers and collaborators, bringing her uncompromising art-sex kamikaze missions to life against scabrous backdrops of blood and semen. Crucially, brutal shock is balanced by lovestruck insights into a voracious dynamo with a tender side who trampled trauma, worships great American writers and “refuses to just shut up”. ■■■■■■■■■■